The erotic in facets

 

The exhibition The multiple faces of the queen covers a number of paintings and drawings made by Viviane Teixeira in recent years. In common, the set integrates the poetic universe of the artist, focused on the conception of narrative images around scenes of life at court, and, in chronological terms, precedes the “pictorial installation” presented both at Centro Cultural São Paulo (2015 ) and the Paço Imperial (2016). Unlike previous exhibitions, however, the works gathered here do not show a previous connection with each other, highlighting their fragmentary and self-referential character. In other words, they constitute narratives per se, of an autonomous and multifaceted nature, as the title of the exhibition seeks to explain.

 

It is well known that the characters and scenes present in the artist's works are born from the conjunction of innumerable references - playing cards, board games, performing arts, literature, paintings and historical narratives. Added to this is an imagery repertoire that encompasses biology, decorative arts and clothing. All these elements together contribute to shaping a particular fantasy world, giving visibility to the artist's imagination. Because they are more or less recognizable, they become signs capable of reinforcing the stories that the works represent and even of stimulating the construction of new narratives. However, this dimension ends up covering (or serving as a pretext for not addressing) other characteristics of the work, such as, for example, the exteriorization of the erotic.

 

Although the term eroticism seems appropriate, especially with regard to the works that the artist has been developing, given the sexual atmosphere that permeates many of her figures, it is possible that it reduces the symptom that these images make explicit to a commonplace. For this reason, the use of the term erotic becomes preferential, understood here as what precedes what the option for the suffix “ism” usually categorizes (to restrict). The erotic is expressed in the sexual restlessness existing in the ambience of the scenes, in the poses and relationships that the characters establish among themselves, in the sometimes ambiguous character of the representation of the genres. They are characters who desire, who continuously intend their relationship with the environment and with those who observe them: the spectator thus becomes a kind of voyeur , someone who not only observes an event - as a public or even, in a sneaky way, in the corner from the room, behind the curtain or through a keyhole - but there is something uneasy about something that is made explicit before his eyes. That is, it becomes, willing or not, to be desiring.

 

There is yet another circumstance related to the erotic, no less evident; however, it is worth reinforcing, less literal. The sensorial stimulus that shapes, lines, colors, brushstrokes and textures instigate in those who observe these works is also capable of promoting a multiple perception of the erotic tension existing in the works. In addition to recognizable images, these elements of pictorial and graphic language arouse the desire for touch, temperature, delirium and lust - they move from the visual to the haptic appeal, they are capable of provoking the most different sensory relationships, exploring fantasy, excitement, libidinous, discomfort, repulsion - become plastic-visual fetish. With regard to the invoice for these works, although the training in fine arts and the performance in the restoration and conservation of historic paintings are facets of Viviane Teixeira, the artist stands out for her boldness, by distorting a set of technical and aesthetic knowledge, protocols formal and visual, in order to explore a provocative and even disturbing ability to figure the fantastic, the subversive, the visceral, in short, the erotic.

 

Viviane Teixeira's work has an ambiguous nature, because her color, her visual repertoire, her playful character could please without reservation; however, they often promote the opposite: an encounter with that which bothers, that baffles, that provokes. When art simply intends to enchant or enhance and aesthetic conventions guarantee satisfactory results, the decadent and voluptuous atmosphere of these works seems to point to something that language is not able to contain or define, what only the viscerality of wanting allows to express. The queen, more than a sign, constitutes a versatile, obtuse, dubious image, a being whose desire (power) reinforces the capacity to take on countless faces, to circulate in different contexts, to transform and to provoke transformation.

 

Ivair Reinaldim

curator